I couldn't imagine reading this monthly. Not because it's not entertaining throughout...

>The story that can be told in one fat book will run for decades in manga
Ever heard of pacing? Buraiden Gai was a 38 chapter manga that felt like it had enough potential to easily reach 100 chapters

>Ever heard of pacing
Tell me more about pacing. I just read Homunculus in 3 days. The manga was in ongoing for 8 years. Did I read in wrong pace? Should I read Homunculus in 8 years to feel the "pacing" of story?

So you prefer nothing be created over something? Why does it bother you so much? By this same standard, nobody should be allowed to make book series or movie sequels or television shows with more than one season, etc. You can die at any time and manga is very much aimed at all demographics in a way you can always enjoy it. You may simply drop Hajime no Ippo to read something else instead. Manga come out in anthology magazines which means you can be reading that magazine for multiple things and if something bores you suddenly, you can give it less attention. As the success of something like Kimetsu shows, a lot of people are only reading a manga after its over, the audience who does that and the one who reads it ongoing do not have to be the same.

Wasn't Vagabond weekly? In any case I don't care for weekly manga much. I dropped One Piece because I got annoyed following it weekly but I've since picked it back up. I mostly read monthly manga and it's mostly fine. Houseki no Kuni is the only one I have a problem with really but even that isn't completely terrible.

This is a pretty interesting non-complaint. I can see where you're coming from but in my experience the kinds of people that hate long running manga are the same ones that watch seasonal anime and so have just gotten used to stories that only last a couple months. It's all just a difference of perspective and like other anons are saying there's nothing inherently wrong with long running stories. Some manga do just drag on and on but most of the manga I'm reading I'm happy with their progression. 5 years for a monthly manga too is 60 chapters or less, which really isn't long even if it takes a long time in reality time for the story to complete. Reading that after it's done could be done in a few days probably.

Vagabond was in a weekly magazine, it was not weekly, it was like Hunter is today, coming back every now and then for a few chapters. Real, which also ran in a weekly magazine at the same time, did the exact same thing.

When magazines do that kind of thing it makes it difficult to figure out after the fact. I've never followed Vagabond (though I did read the first couple of volumes) so I wouldn't know. I did think the art was too good for being weekly though, even with what seems like short chapter lengths.

You can do that sort of stuff just with basic math if you didn't follow the manga. There's what, 325ish chapters of Vagabond? It ran in the magazine for nearly 20 years before going on its current hiatus. So logically, it would have had more like 850 chapters if it was produced weekly.

>Why does it bother you so much?
Such format limits the story in the same way how TV format of anime limits the story compared to 1 hours long OVA or movie. The story structure is limited. Every chapter supposed to end in some kind of cliffhanger. Squeeze cliffhangers. To make you want to read more and buy another toilet roll next week. You know it. It designed to keep this momentum going. To make money. It remind me of Japanese ADHD TV ads.

Why are you acting like this is a Japanese thing? Serializations have been a thing for ages in the West. It's not even true that every series has to end on some hyped cliffhanger, a lot of manga that do it are mocked. Serializations are in anthologies, which means, no specific series is supposed to be the only reason you buy the next issue. People who only like one manga just wait for the new volume to come out (One Piece fans for example).

>Why are you acting like this is a Japanese thing?
I don't care about west. Volumes of manga are pretty small itself.